
Confiscate all of Apple's assets, and ban the sale of all their products in the EU. Tim C(r)ook is worse than the mafia.
74 publicly visible posts • joined 7 Dec 2007
You fail to realize the technical hurdles that must be overcome to build GPS receivers that have a front-end that is selective enough to not be interfered by a signal only about 5 MHz below GPS frequency billions of times stronger. Sure they can be built, but you would never be able to put one in your pocket. Add $150.00 and a 5kg 4 cavity band-pass-filter and they would be compatible. Forget about hand-held devices! There was gross incompetence involved on both sides. Lightsquared should have never thought about asking to use that band for terrestial transmitters, and the FCC should have never given even the minimal go-ahead. It is obvious that all those involved did not know absolutely nothing about what they were doing, or what they were trying to do.
You fail to realize the technical hurdles that must be overcome to build GPS receivers that have a front-end that is selective enough to not be interfered by a signal only about 5 MHz below GPS frequency milions of times stronger. Sure they can be built, but you would never be able to put one in your pocket. Add $150.00 and a 5kg 4 cavity band-pass-filter and they would be compatible. Forget about hand-held devices! There was gross incompetence involved on both sides. Lightsquared should have never thought about asking to use that band for terrestial transmitters, and the FCC should have never given even the minimal go-ahead. It is obvious that all those involved did not know absolutely nothing about what they were doing, or what they were trying to do.
Lightsquare'd move to even think that they would be able to use those frequencies so close to 1575 MHz used by civilian GPS was total technical ignorance and stupidity. Assuming that Lightsquared would be able to filter out any interference from their transmitters to the GPS frequencies, they surely could not have expected that the manufacturers of GPS equipment would be able to put suitable band-pass filters on the front-end of their receivers to prevent them to be saturated with the earth-based Lightsquared signal over 90dB more powerful. Immagine a smartphone with a telephone book sized filter attached to it! While this issue would have probably been able to be solved (but at what cost!) on board aircraft or in other vehicles, it sure would not have been possible with hand-held devices. The FCC should have NEVER even considered re-assigning spectrum to be used from only from space-to-earth. Somebody got some big kickbacks!...and that somebody in my opinion must be fired, and must spend the next 20 years in jail.
OFCOM doesn't know what they are talking about. DTT on white space? Give me a break OFCOM! How much did the telecoms bribe you to make such an idiotic proposal. Just imagine everybody having to retune their TV every few hours because of changes in the whitespace resources. If anything needs a sure frequency assignment that is interference-free, it is DTT!
From my personal experience, if a device like this is intensively used, the battery capacity will be significantly be decreased after 2 years- unless it fails catastrophically before then. Another weak point can be the charging/usb connectors. This M$ built-in "programmed obsolescence" is an outright scam.
The solution? Maybe the UE should make it mandatory for manufacturers to extend warranties to six years by paying an extra 10% of original purchase price before the standard 2 year warranty period expires. Since no Li-ion battery is going to last 6 years, this bad habit of gluing everything together will suddenly cease.
Another thing I would like to see is a mandatory "repairabilty index" sticker on all consumer electronics; which must pass a minimum limit or otherwise be banned from sale in the UE.
No way a wireless provider can give decent service and bandwidth compared to a FTTH connection, no matter how they do it. I have heard this so many times and the end result is always crap. This might only appeal to those individuals that are blacklisted by broadband providers because they don't pay their bills. I give a FAIL before they even start
Time will come that Apple (and maybe some other manufacturers too) will assemble their ware and then just seal everything with some low-density potting compound to make it impossible to disassemble without destroying it.
Then they might add a timer and/or hour-meter to disable the entire unit (except to back-up data?) after a certain number of working hours or after a certain date. The unit will just display:
"This device has expired; please visit your nearest Apple store and purchase one of our new great products".
They probably haven't started used potting compound yet because of the added weight.
Look out for a new patent for "Low-weight potting compound for tamper-proof portable electronic devices"
During normal use, a laptop battery will last at the most for 2 years after which its capacity becomes noticeably impaired. I would immediately put such devices on my black list knowing the difficulty of repair, or in the case of replacing batteries, just ordinary maintenance. It is not the pentalobe screws that bother me, but their excess use of glue and adhesives. There is no excuse for high-tech to be assembled in such a cheap low-tech manner. People are just plain stupid to spend so much hard-earned cash to go out and buy this crap that will prematurely wind up in a landfill.
Give me a break Apple. PRIOR ART!!! This is on one of my older PCs with an ASUS motherboard dated 2002!
B U R N I N H E L L with your crappy troll patents. Never did and never will buy your crap because you think you own everything.
Anybody working with video compression knows that the hardest thing for it to do is handling rapid movement of detailed objects. Just having this dude sit there and barely move is no demo at all; I would have liked to see a such a comparison with a F1 race. Very strange that nobody present made an issue over this; were they all drugged?. One must also consider that there is not much of a comparison to make even if this clip was in 1080p h.264, as any "blockiness" and other artifacts, along with a loss in resolution could be the result of the Youtube encoding.
Very crappy demo, but I hope that h.265 lives up to the claims of 50% bandwidth less than h.264 with the same quality
This absurd award for a trivial algorithm is in the same category as the Apple / Samsung controversy. Over $ 1 billion?? Give me a break! The maximum award for a crappy patent like this should have been at the very most - if found guilty - 1% of revenues generated by the sale of that particular chip. This time it looks like the entire court was on crack!
All the people that I know that use Groupon are addicted to it, and if they don't get a "deal", they just don't go. So a business that is offering whatever for a fraction of the normal price is just not going to see that customer any more. Useless and expensive advertising method that just attracts freeloaders.
You have to scroll down to see it....
This is almost a blatant contempt of court as to reach the link you must scroll all the way down the page to see it, even if your monitor is set to 1600x1200. Who is going to see it?
I hope the court orders them to publish it in 20pt font on their homepage, and then provide a link if one wants to continue to Apple's page.
If they still refuse to comply slap these pricks with a £ 50 million/day fine and ban the entire Apple domain from the entire EU until they do.
SHAME on you Apple! ...acting like a bunch of spoiled brats!
"They could take down the apple.co.uk domain, but it wouldn't make any difference as Apple have only had ownership of it since just recently. all it does it redirect to apple.com/uk which is where everyone has been going for the uk apple site for many, many years. I doubt many people really realise apple.co.uk now points to Apple."
If that is the case just block the entire apple.com domain in the entire UK!....
I saw that "sad" apology on the Apple website a few days ago and was wondering what the judges thought about it and if they would take further action. Now they say it "takes 2 weeks" to change it? for Apple ? Give me a break Apple - and you better stop bullying the judges around otherwise who knows what is going to happen next. Maybe the court should take the entire apple.co.uk domain down until they comply. I am beginning to really hate Apple's bully tactics!
Apple never saw any of my cash and never will, and now MS is never going to see mine again. Next notebook I buy I will DEMAND a refund for the crap OS (win 8) on it even if it means initiating a lawsuit. Looks like German courts are becoming the EU troll havens.
Shame on you Apple for dumping Google Maps and replacing it with a bunch of crap. So what happened to your hyper-testing of installed SW? No matter how many engineers you hire, there is no way you could have made a working map app in a few months. That takes a lot of time and patience; plus you can't possibly have all that Streetview data which permits the Google navigation to even tell you what is written on the road signs at intersections (unless you steal that from them!)
From the likes and dislikes of the various posts it looks as if Register readers are 15% pro-Apple and 85% anti-Apple. If overall sales would be in the same proportions we wouldn't have the Apple-sue-everybody problem anymore as they would be bankrupt. Too bad that is not the case (yet) !
I think Samsung should play a smart move now: sell all their products without any pre-installed OS (as assembled PC's were once sold), only with a bare essentials sw that lets you make a phone call with limited internet connectivity. Then they could make their personalized version of Android available as an open-source download from a server in any country (like most of Europe) that does not honor all these idiotic software patents. It would then be each individuals' responsibility to download and install the full OS; which could easily be furnished in many versions, from a no-frills non-infringing version to a feature-packed "infringing" version. What will Apple do then? Sue everybody that uses non-Apple smartphones? The manufacturer could surely not be held responsible for the consumer that installs infringing software!
If the US does not quickly revise their patent system, and invalidate ALL software patents, along with "rounded rectangle" patents, they might find themselves in a new digital "dark age"
By letting 12 morons decide the future of technological innovation is just too much!
Almost 99.99% of this so called "high end" audiophile biz is a fraudsters haven. I know they wouldn't be in business if there enough stupid fools around that actually believe these snake oil salesmen, but I should would like to see them in jail for fraud! And that includes the Amazon CEO.
The constitutional right "to bear arms" might have been OK 2 centuries ago, and all those guns laying around will do nothing but harm.
Firearms should only be in the hands of the military and the police!
Get with it USA, try to be more civilized- get rid of all those damned guns, and send all those diehard NRA fanatics to the moon.
I have seen these "sensors" inside my phones since the mid 1990's (mainly Nokia's). A little patch of white paper with a red checkerboard pattern that becomes all red if it ever gets wet. Now Apple gets a patent for this?? Looks like Apple is becoming a full-fledged patent troll! SHAME SHAME SHAME!!! And Apple is saying that Samsung is copying the crap they make?